00:00Our state of mind was clearly fixed on the ongoing frustration, the exhaustion almost,
00:07of the issue of homelessness and housing in the state and the connection, the affordability issue
00:13before it was coined with the consciousness that it is today. The issue that defines more issues
00:19in more ways on more days, the cost of living, the issue of housing in this state, a state that
00:25frankly had been dumb as we wanted to be for decades and decades. We designed a system,
00:28a machine, over the course of the last half century to make it more difficult to build.
00:33It was intentionally designed. It wasn't by chance. It wasn't by happenstance. It was designed not to
00:39build. And that required us not just to think differently and argue for different results,
00:47but to rebuild the machine. And that's what we've committed to do over the course of the last
00:51number of years. And it's taken a number of years to build the political will, the political capital,
00:57to build the partnerships, the coalitions. They're stubborn coalitions here. A lot of folks
01:02didn't want to see change. Local governments did not, I assure you at the time, want to see change.
01:10So much so that one of the first acts as governor was to sue one of those local cities.
01:18Check my status at City Hall down there in Huntington Beach. I'm not, you know, they're not enough security
01:29to walk down those halls. We sued Huntington Beach. Been in litigation for years and years and years.
01:36They thought we'd go away. We didn't. Forty-six other states were put on notice. Cities were put on notice.
01:41We convened work groups north and south and we began to work on holding folks accountable
01:48to the housing elements, to what we refer to in the vernacular of the state, the RENA goals.
01:54And we decided it was time to have some stretch goals. We went from 1.2 million legally required
02:00housing units to be constructed in the state of California in what we refer to as the fifth cycle
02:05of the arena goals. We more than doubled it to 2.5 million in the last cycle. We have seen
02:12over the
02:12course of the last few years progress not only made in terms of achieving those goals, but we've seen
02:19those goals extend to now over 3.5 million housing units where zoning has been committed to and progress
02:29has been advanced in order to blow past that legally binding 2031 goal of 2.5 million new housing starts.
02:42That's progress. We continue to make progress as it relates to the creation of a housing accountability
02:49unit so it wasn't ad hoc. And the purpose of the housing accountability unit was to provide not just
02:55sticks but carrots to provide support, technical assistance to help cities and counties all across
03:00the state of California achieve those audacious goals. We also significantly increased our tax credit
03:07program. In fact, we're advancing another half a billion dollars in this trailer bill to do just that.
03:14It was in the modest single digits when we started.
03:21So accountability, support, promoting progress, but also promoting fundamental reforms and working
03:27with the legislature and two remarkable leaders behind me and Jesse, Senator, I'll get to you in a moment.
03:35We started to chip away. ADUs was a big deal. Working on single-family zoning, SB 9 and 10, big
03:43deals. 2011 was a big deal,
03:45but nothing more significant and consequential. After nibbling around the edges, 32 secret reform bills that I was proud to
03:53promote, proud to sign,
03:55the Holy Grail was out there. The thing that Jerry Brown once referred to as the Lord's work.
04:03That struggled to even get a committee hearing, let alone out of a committee or a floor vote.
04:09And we were able to achieve that together rather audaciously. I know it wasn't the way you always
04:15want it. Not in a budget, certainly, but we got it done in the budget. And we did the most
04:23consequential housing reforms on infill and seek reform in California's history last year. And what
04:29was remarkable about that, it's the old adage, once the mind is stretched, it never goes back to its original
04:33form. After all the friction, the frustration around that, you all came back. The legislature
04:39came back this year saying, what more can we do? Because the support you received from that was
04:45off the charts. People recognizing we need to do more and better. We need to produce visible,
04:51in the spirit of the Senators, Mark, visible results. They want to see more progress, more hard
04:57bats. They want to see more projects like this built, not more press conferences. And so that led
05:04to a series of reforms that we're announcing and landing here today. And let me quickly sum
05:08those up and sign this.
05:11As Gustavo rightfully said, the issue of financing in the labyrinth, the jungle gym, not even a ladder
05:19of sorts that you have to navigate to get financing. I think, you know, you were talking about stitching
05:24together eight different funding sources just from the state of California. And we applied 20 times,
05:32she continues to remind me, for those funds. Now we will be advancing. We have technically went in
05:41effect a couple of days ago, as Gustavo reminded me. It's in effect. This codifies it and allows the
05:46funding to flow to the agency that's now been established that will allow us to establish this
05:52one stop shop to reduce the friction, the time, the duplication, the repetition, the bureaucracy,
05:57as it relates to accessing those funds. What does that mean? You reduce bureaucracy,
06:01you increase access and transparency that drives down costs, drives down the time to a project.
06:08And we estimate with that reform and the reforms that I'll get to in a moment on impact fees,
06:14that we can reduce the cost per unit by 60 to $70,000. A governor has not been able to
06:22say that
06:23in years and years in this state. That's progress.
06:28And that impact fee is an important part. I saw this firsthand. I remember I was a mayor.
06:36Jesse reminded us he was as well, once a mayor, always a mayor. And, you know, I saw,
06:42dare I say, I may have even participated in a little bit of the abuse in that respect. And I
06:48use
06:48that word intentionally because it started to get a little abusive, the impact fees. I mean,
06:56become candidly usurious. Some ways it's outrageous. And for too long, we've been complicit. We've been
07:05passive. We've been indulgent. Impact fees tend to be solving a lot of other problems, but it's not
07:12solving this problem. It's not solving the issue that we claim is a crisis, but we're not acting as
07:18if it is because we're not resolving it. And so you've got some cities and counties, these impact
07:24fees are comical. They're outrageous. It makes it quite literally impossible to develop an affordable
07:32unit. It's BS. It's just a brand. I don't care if it's a nonprofit attached. It's BS because we're
07:39stacking so many fees to solve so many other problems. So we try to figure out what we can
07:45do at the state level. We don't run local planning commissions, though we want to run accountability
07:50and focus on that. And so we came up with a creative strategy. We took a few at bats on
07:55this
07:56the last few years. We couldn't figure it out this year. We finally figured it out. And that was to
08:00attach. It seems a little obvious in hindsight, but all the state funded programs, if you want state
08:05funding, you want a dollar, you want $200, you want $200 million, no local impact fees then. Drive
08:12down the cost. And if you do that, then we're also going to allow those dollars that you didn't attach
08:20as a fee to benefit your scoring at the state level and provide that as an offset to your quote
08:28unquote local match. And all of a sudden, when we started to knit this together, braid it together,
08:34folks started to come together, including the leaders behind me in the legislature that drove
08:40this reform. So this is the first time in decades, first time in my knowledge, period,
08:44we've done anything on impact fees. So we're streamlining bureaucracy, reorganizing the construct
08:49around a simple one-stop application around financing, focusing on real accountability at the local
08:55level, driving accountability at the state level with fundamental land use reforms, and time to
09:01development forms as it relates to CEQA. We're organizing in a construct more support, not just
09:07more punitive actions, and we're more resolved than ever to reach our goals. And here I'll conclude,
09:13and this is important, and this may actually make some sense, because talking about RHNA goals
09:19and eight-year, six cycles makes no sense to anybody. But this might. 682,000 units have been constructed
09:28since 2019. 59% more residential construction than when we started. 59%. We've reduced the time to
09:40entitlement and permitting from 160 days to 68 days. That's a 57% reduction. 59% increase in
09:49the number of residential construction units and a 57% decline in the time to get these projects at
09:55the state level entitled. I'm proud of that. And let me give you another proof point. In the last 30
10:00years,
10:02we've been struggling on multifamily. In the last five years, we've produced more multifamily than we have
10:07in the last 30 years. So we're finally seeing progress. We're coming out the other side of this flywheel,
10:15and I'm proud of that, and I'll end on this, including, as Jesse said, on homelessness.
10:21And there's not been a governor that can claim this, but it's only because of the work that Barbara's been
10:26doing,
10:27Mayor Lee and Jesse with his old hat, former mayor in Berkeley, and mayors across the region in the Bay
10:36and
10:36across the state of California. But for the first time in almost two decades, California has seen a reduction
10:41in unsheltered homelessness. Visible reduction. Still a lot of progress, close to double digits,
10:479.5%. Few states, by the way, just three states can lay claim to any kind of reduction like that
10:53in
10:53the United States. You're seeing increases all across the country, double-digit increases in
10:58unsheltered homelessness. Finally, in California, we're seeing progress because we've driven the same
11:02mindset of accountability on encampments. As it relates to housing, we've also incorporated
11:07homeless accountability units. We're driving reforms, sticks, and carrots as it relates to Prop 1
11:13and the $6.38 billion bond that we put out for mental health, the work we've done on encampment
11:19resolution grants, the work we've done on Home Key, which was referenced a moment ago in our tour.
11:24We're finally starting to see, again, another flywheel and finally starting to see results and progress.
11:30Forgive the long-windedness, but, you know, it's what happens when you're termed out.
11:37Because we had a theory for the case, and we executed. And none of this, I assure you, was easy.
11:44I've said it many times, change has its enemies. Every single one of these things
11:51didn't happen before for a good reason.
11:55Politics did not line up with the policy. And so I just want to express
12:03my gratitude for all of you that helped create those conditions
12:08where we were able to move the needle and make real this progress.
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